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Monday, January 4, 2016

Hey everybody!
Hope you all had a fun and safe New Year celebration. 2016 is here and with it a fresh new line-up of films. With your help we'll continue to make Film Club something special here at the Crete Library. To kick things off I've chosen the masterfully crafted film by Elia Kazan, On the Waterfront.

On the Waterfront is a 1954 American crime drama film with elements of film noir. The film was directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg. It stars Marlon Brando and features Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb, Rod Steiger, Pat Henning, and, in her film debut, Eva Marie Saint. The soundtrack score was composed by Leonard Bernstein. The film is based on "Crime on the Waterfront" by Malcolm Johnson, a series of articles published in November-December 1948 in the New York Sun which won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. The film focuses on union violence and corruption amongst longshormen while detailing widespread corruption, extortion, and racketeering on the waterfronts of Hoboken, New Jersey.

On the Waterfront was a critical and commercial success and received 12 Academy Award nominations, winning eight, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Brando, Best Supporting Actress for Saint, and Best Director for Kazan. The film holds a 98% certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes out of 58 critical reviews. In 1989, On the Waterfront was deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Roger Ebert awarded the film 4/4 stars, later adding it to his list of Great Movies. He said this of the film, "Today the story no longer seems as fresh; both the fight against corruption and the romance fall well within ancient movie conventions. But the acting and the best dialogue passages have an impact that has not dimmed; it is still possible to feel the power of the film and of Brando and Kazan, who changed American movie acting forever."

We will be meeting Thursday, Jan. 28th at 6:15pm. Hope to see you there!